IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v48y1999i12p1721-1734.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social support, social selection and self-assessed health status: results from the veterans health study in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Ren, Xinhua S.
  • Skinner, Katherine
  • Lee, Austin
  • Kazis, Lewis

Abstract

This study provided a comprehensive assessment of the association between social support and health using longitudinal data from the Veterans Health Study. Unlike previous studies which examined the relationship between one single domain of social support with either mental or physical health, the present study assessed the effects of three different domains of social support on multiple measures of health. The findings of the study indicated that social support tended to mediate the deleterious effects of non-military traumatic events; whereas the adverse consequences of traumatic events experienced in the military were not affected by social support, suggesting that stressors associated with combat had a long lasting effect on the health status of veterans. The study results revealed that compared with those with better health, respondents with poor health were more likely to have lower levels of social support, suggesting that poor health might be a barrier to a person's ability to participate and/or maintain social relationships. The study also showed that different types of social support had varying beneficial effects on different measures of health. While perceived support had a strong effect on all the measures of health (except alcoholism) included in the study, living arrangement had a significant effect on post-traumatic stress disorder or physical health and participation in group activities had a strong effect only on physical functioning. The results of the study highlight the need for future research to determine whether particular types of social support affect various aspects of health differently. This simultaneous focus on multiple support functions and health outcomes is important because it provides insight into the mechanisms linking social support to health.

Suggested Citation

  • Ren, Xinhua S. & Skinner, Katherine & Lee, Austin & Kazis, Lewis, 1999. "Social support, social selection and self-assessed health status: results from the veterans health study in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(12), pages 1721-1734, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:48:y:1999:i:12:p:1721-1734
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(99)00069-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Patulny, Roger & Siminski, Peter & Mendolia, Silvia, 2015. "The front line of social capital creation – A natural experiment in symbolic interaction," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 8-18.
    2. Dong, Gang Nathan, 2016. "Social capital as correlate, antecedent, and consequence of health service demand in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 85-96.
    3. Hizli, Feride Gokben & Taskintuna, Nilgun & Isikli, Sedat & Kilic, Cengiz & Zileli, Leyla, 2009. "Predictors of posttraumatic stress in children and adolescents," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 349-354, March.
    4. Cao, Yue & Hwang, Sean-Shong & Xi, Juan, 2012. "Project-induced displacement, secondary stressors, and health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(7), pages 1130-1138.
    5. Landes, Scott D. & Wilder, JeffriAnne & Williams, Desiree, 2017. "The effect of race and birth cohort on the veteran mortality differential," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 36-44.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:48:y:1999:i:12:p:1721-1734. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.